Functional relationship between brain regions in schizophrenia evaluated with Pearson's correlation between event-related potentials.

As part of a study of the somatosensory P300 event-related potential (ERP) in paranoid and nonparanoid schizophrenic patients (8) Pearson's product-moment correlations between ERP waveforms were calculated to study the functional relationship between brain areas. ERP were recorded from F3, F4, P3 and P4; interhemispheric (F3 to F4; P3 to P4) and intrahemispheric (F3 to P3; F4 to P4) correlations were obtained. There was no significant difference among the paranoid and nonparanoid patients and healthy controls for both the interhemispheric and the intrahemispheric correlations. The lack of disruption of functional relationship between brain areas on the patients do not support the hypofrontality and the laterality hypothesis of schizophrenia. However, the use of neuroleptics by the patients, the study of the whole waveforms and not parts of them and the use of linked-ears reference could account for these negative results.